“The same woman who invited the kind of men into the house who should not have been let close to a little girl. The kind of men like the one you saved me—”
“Ryan, enough,” Grant suddenly interjected. “I know.”
I took a few breaths to cool the fire burning in my veins. “Then why did you go out of your way to do that for her?”
His grip tightened on the steering wheel, his massive hands looking almost capable of ripping it right off. “I didn’t do it for her,” he said around a heavy exhale. “I did it for you. Because I thought that’s what you would have wanted.” He gave me a sideways look, then looked back at the road. “I did it because as messed up as your mom was, she brought you into the world. And that was enough of a reason to go a little out of my way to make sure she left this world with some dignity.”
His confession left me speechless. One part of me wanted to snort over the idea of dignity applying to my mom. Another part of me wanted to melt into a puddle. He’d done it for me. Because she was my mom, the person who’d brought me into the world. Forget how she had, who she had with, or what had come after. For Grant, the fact that she was my mother was enough for him to want to pay her the respect I wasn’t sure she deserved. Not after what she’d done. Not after what had almost happened because of her. Not now, with the knowledge that would forever impact my life . . . and others.
My stomach twisted as my mind started to get lost in that maze. I couldn’t think about this. It never led to anything constructive. I needed to change the subject before everything I needed to tell Grant came out wrong and I ruined any chance of getting him to understand.
“So, football . . .” I started.
“I’ve heard of it,” he teased.
“You made it.”
“You sound surprised.” Grant looked at me while we were stopped at a red light.
“Not surprised. I always knew you’d make it big one day.”
A single chuckle came from him. “You and no one else.”
I wanted to tell him me and everyone else, but I didn’t want to get into another pointless argument. Not when we were getting closer to the Pearl District and I’d still gotten nowhere telling him what I needed to. “Do you love it?”
“Yes,” he answered right away, then tipped his head. “And no.”
My forehead folded. There were few things Grant had ever loved, and football had been one of them. “Why no?”
He was quiet. Then he cleared his throat. “What about you? What do you do to pay the bills?”
I wanted to laugh. What the rest of the world did to pay their bills was very different from what Grant Turner did to pay his. He could probably pay his monthly bills with the change rolling around in his truck.
“Well, after finishing my GED, I went to dental hygienist school.” I continued to stare out the window, mindlessly playing with a loose thread on my sweater sleeve. Talking with Grant about the person I was today was so surreal. We’d gone from wild teens to responsible adults seemingly overnight, and this adult conversation was hard to wrap my head around.
“Nice job. But I never would have guessed you’d want to become a dental hygienist. Not in a hundred years.”
“What did you think I would have become?”
He didn’t hesitate. “An actress.”
An actress. God, I’d almost forgotten about that dream, that’s how distant it felt. It seemed like the dream of a girl from another lifetime.
“I was on my own. I had to take care of myself and be responsible. I couldn’t take a chance on making it as an actress when I had rent to pay and groceries to buy. Someone at a career fair told me about the demand for dental hygienists, the salary and benefits, and that I wouldn’t have to be in school forever. That was all I needed to know for it to become my new dream career.”
Grant rolled down his window an inch, just enough to let a little cool air into the cab. Grant had always driven with the window down or cracked, just like he’d always left his bedroom window, even in the dead of winter. Back then it had been to air out the scent of filth or cigarette smoke, but the inside of his cab smelled perfectly nice now. Like conditioned leather and the same soap I remembered him using. Another one of those old habits dying never, I guessed.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did,” I said, clasping my hands together, knowing this was as good a segue as any.
His head turned my way for a moment. “You’re not a hygienist anymore?”
I answered with a shake of my head.
“Why not?” he asked simply, though the answer was anything but simple.